Canticle of Canticles 4

¹ LOVER: How beautiful you are, my beloved, how beautiful you are! Your eyes are doves, behind yourveil; your hair is like a flock of goats surging down Mount Gilead.

² Your teeth, a flock of sheep to be shorn when they come up from the washing. Each one has its twin,not one unpaired with another.

³ Your lips are a scarlet thread and your words enchanting. Your cheeks, behind your veil, are halves ofpomegranate.

⁴ Your neck is the Tower of David built on layers, hung round with a thousand bucklers, and each theshield of a hero.

⁵ Your two breasts are two fawns, twins of a gazel e, that feed among the lilies.

⁶ Before the day-breeze rises, before the shadows flee, I shal go to the mountain of myrrh, to the hil offrankincense.

⁷ You are whol y beautiful, my beloved, and without a blemish.

⁸ Come from Lebanon, my promised bride, come from Lebanon, come on your way. Look down from theheights of Amanus, from the crests of Senir and Hermon, the haunt of lions, the mountains of leopards.

⁹ You ravish my heart, my sister, my promised bride, you ravish my heart with a single one of yourglances, with a single link of your necklace.

¹⁰ What spel s lie in your love, my sister, my promised bride! How delicious is your love, more deliciousthan wine! How fragrant your perfumes, more fragrant than al spices!

¹¹ Your lips, my promised bride, distil wild honey. Honey and milk are under your tongue; and the scent ofyour garments is like the scent of Lebanon.

¹² She is a garden enclosed, my sister, my promised bride; a garden enclosed, a sealed fountain.

¹³ Your shoots form an orchard of pomegranate trees, bearing most exquisite fruit:

¹⁴ nard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with al the incense-bearing trees; myrrh and aloes, with thesubtlest odours.

¹⁵ Fountain of the garden, wel of living water, streams flowing down from Lebanon!

¹⁶ BELOVED: Awake, north wind, come, wind of the south! Breathe over my garden, to spread its sweetsmel around. Let my love come into his garden, let him taste its most exquisite fruits.